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Quayle, Outspent by Bush, Will Quit Race, Aide Says

Former Vice President Dan Quayle has decided to drop out of the race for President, a senior official with his campaign said tonight, because he is convinced that he would not be able to raise enough money to keep pace with Gov. George W. Bush of Texas.

The official said that Mr. Quayle had struggled to remain optimistic about his chances of winning the Republican Party nomination but that a review of his campaign's finances in recent days had forced him to conclude that the odds against him were insurmountable.

''Although Vice President Quayle was extremely bullish on the campaign's progress nationally and in New Hampshire, it became clear that he did not have the resources to compete effectively in the 18 or so contests that occur in the 30 days following New Hampshire,'' said the official, who would speak only on the condition of not being named.

New Hampshire holds the nation's first Presidential primary contest early next year, and Mr. Quayle had invested significant time, money and hope there.

But, the official said, Mr. Quayle came to realize that ''even a strong showing or win there would not provide the momentum needed to achieve ultimate victory. And he's always said that the moment he concluded that the campaign could no longer secure victory, he would not ask supporters to continue expending their time and energy.''

Mr. Quayle is the fourth candidate to drop out of the race for the Republican nomination. Preceding him were Representative John R. Kasich of Ohio, former Gov. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Senator Bob Smith of New Hampshire, who announced that he was leaving the Republican Party and would press forward with the quest for the Presidency on his own.

Mr. Quayle's exit narrows the field of Republican contenders to eight, including the conservative television commentator Patrick J. Buchanan. But there is widespread belief that Mr. Buchanan might decide to seek the nomination of the Reform Party instead.

From the moment Mr. Quayle announced his candidacy in Huntington, Ind., on April 14, it failed to catch fire. Like most other candidates, he was eclipsed by Mr. Bush, who has become, far and away, the front-runner for the nomination.

Oddly, it was the Texas Governor's father, President George Bush, who first put Mr. Quayle on the national stage by picking him for the Vice Presidency, which Mr. Quayle held from 1989 to 1993.

But during those years, Mr. Quayle arguably became most famous for his awkward, embarrassing verbal gaffes, and his campaign seemed in part to be an uphill struggle to persuade voters to take him seriously. Mr. Quayle appealed to voters by advocating a 30 percent across-the-board tax cut and a return to traditional values.

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The campaign's fate seemed to be sealed, however, when Mr. Quayle finished eighth among the nine candidates who competed in Iowa's nonbinding straw poll last month. Afterward, leading people working for Mr. Quayle in several states defected to rivals' campaigns.

Mr. Quayle pressed on, insisting he was not discouraged. In an interview a week and a half after the straw poll, while he was campaigning in New Hampshire, Mr. Quayle said, ''Believe me, if I didn't think I had a good chance of winning -- why spend 18 hours a day, six, seven days a week doing this?''

''There are other things in life,'' Mr. Quayle added. ''The moment I'm convinced that I can't win, then I won't be here.''

The campaign official said the moment came over the weekend and was a matter of dollars and sense. The official would not give details of Mr. Quayle's fund-raising since June 30, when he reported a total of $3.5 million in campaign contributions for the first two quarters of the year. Mr. Bush, by contrast, reported about $37 million for that period, and has since gone over $50 million.

Another adviser to the Quayle campaign, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said Mr. Quayle could no longer ignore that disparity. ''At some point,'' the adviser said tonight, ''your head takes over your heart.''

Mr. Bush has also consistently led his Republican rivals in national opinion polls by large double-digit margins. Although one recent national poll showed Mr. Quayle a very distant second, most others have put Elizabeth Dole, the former president of the Red Cross, in that position, and some have shown Mr. Quayle also trailing Senator John McCain of Arizona.

Mr. Quayle had gained little enough traction that it is unclear whether his departure from the race will have much of an impact on any of the other contenders in the field. Mr. Quayle was concentrating especially on the conservative end of the Republican spectrum, a group of voters also being wooed by the wealthy publisher Steve Forbes, the radio talk show host Alan Keyes and Gary L. Bauer.

Mr. Quayle's advisers would not say whether Mr. Quayle planned to endorse one of his rivals.

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A version of this article appears in print on September 27, 1999, on Page A00016 of the National edition with the headline: Quayle, Outspent by Bush, Will Quit Race, Aide Says. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe